Bachmann attacks Gingrich for working with Pelosi, taking money from Freddie Mac

By Corbett Daly

November 16, 2011 / 10:11 AM
/ CBS News

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White House hopeful and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann on Wednesday slammed rival Newt Gingrich for working with Rep. Nancy Pelosi when he was speaker of the House in the 1990s.

Bachmann launched a new website, nosurprises2012.com, which aims to highlight the differences between the conservative lawmaker and her seven rivals for the Republican nomination for president.

"This highlights just one of the many examples where former Speaker Newt Gingrich had positions that are really against what the people in the primary states are looking for," Bachmann said on CBS' "The Early Show." (watch above)

Republican primary voters tend to be more conservative than Republicans as a whole and are certainly more conservative than general election voters.

"He was standing with Nancy Pelosi to advocate for a national sales tax on energy. That's not what we need right now in our economy. He was also the chief author of the individual health care mandate and that is what is (now) known as Obamacare. No one wants to see that either," she said, referring to conservative primary voters who oppose the president's signature legislative achievement.

Bachmann is looking for a victory in the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3, when voters actually actually begin the process of picking a nominee for the party. Iowa is make-or-break for Bachmann, who won the straw poll there in August.

Iowa is more socially conservative than New Hampshire, which picks its candidate a week later. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is heavily favored to win New Hampshire.

It is an uphill battle for the founder of the Tea Party Caucus in the House of Representatives. A Bloomberg poll released Tuesday showed Bachmann with just 5 percent support in Iowa, behind businessman Herman Cain, Texas Rep. Ron Paul, Romney and Gingrich. The four candidates are in statistical dead heat, with Cain at 20 percent, Paul at 19 percent, Romney at 18 percent and Gingrich at 17 percent.

"This is an extremely fluid race. Quite a few of the polls show that 70 percent of the people are undecided," she said.

"People see me as a straight-shooter. I say what I mean, I mean what I say, and I don't dance around. I'm not a politician. I'm a real person. That's what people are looking for," she added.

Bachmann also took aim at Gingrich for taking money from Freddie Mac, the government-controlled firm that guarantees millions of American mortgages and has lost billions of taxpayer dollars since the financial crisis of 2008.